This presentation appears in the November 28, 2003 issue of Executive Intelligence Review.

BOSTON CAMPAIGN WECAST

Reviving the Sense of Mission
For American Citizens Today

by Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr.

Below are Lyndon LaRouche's opening remarks to his campaign webcast in Boston, on Nov. 15, 2003. Windows Media audio archives of the entire event are also available:

I should just do a few preliminary remarks. I'll address three subjects today. I was going to do something similar up there in Vermont yesterday, at the university at Middlebury, but they wanted me to shorten the presentation from three-quarters of an hour to a half an hour, which I did. So, I left some things out. So, I shall give you, today, a somewhat amplified version of what I said, to you—as a different audience, though I said it to a university campus audience—yesterday. And, as you will see, there is a significant difference, in the way that two points have to be presented.

All right. The three points are, which I will touch upon, to present here: First of all, the issue of war. And the question is, what is the nature of the policy—when did it start, and what is the policy, which has gotten us into a spreading process of war, in Asia and probably elsewhere?

Secondly, the economic crisis. This economy, in its present form, is now disintegrating. Nothing can prevent the present IMF system and the present Federal Reserve System, from disintegrating—nothing. But, it can go in one of two ways: It can go, either through intervention, as Franklin Roosevelt-style intervention back in 1933, to reorganize the system before total chaos erupts; or, we can wait, until it simply blows up, all by itself. There's a massive effort to postpone that blowup, now, by printing money in various ways. The best estimate is, that the blowup will occur, probably, by March or April of next year, at the latest. The ability to continue to print money, to postpone the program, will be blown out by then. It can blow out earlier. It could blow out next week; it's ready to blow now. The fundamentals are all rotten. There are no good fundamentals. The United States is the victim of the biggest "Snow job" in history, on economics, and we've got Treasury Secretary Snow to prove it. (The official liar of Washington, D.C.)

The third thing, is the question of the generation gap, and what the significance is, of the difference in the attitudes and roles of, principally, two generations: one, the generation which came into maturity, or semi-adult immaturity during the middle of the 1960s; the ones who are now in their fifties, who are generally running the institutions, and running government, businesses, and so forth. And the other, is the generation which is now coming largely into college age, including those between 18 and 25, university-eligible age. And, it's the conflict between these two generations, which I shall turn to in the conclusion: what the nature of it is; what we do about it.

War and the 'Reichstag Fire'

All right, now, first on the war, itself: As I said in the beginning of January of 2001, before George Bush was inaugurated—George W. Bush—as the acting President of the United States. Whether he was elected or not, is irrelevant; we know that Gore lost, in any case. But Gore was always lost, and he hasn't improved since.

But I said, on the basis of his stupidity—the President's stupidity, and his commitments—it was inevitable that the depression, which was already in progress in 2001, fully in progress, would not be stopped—it would become worse. And, the danger that this posed, apart from the economic collapse, was that, as in Germany, in the events of 1928 and '33, when the collapse of the economy struck Europe, as it struck the United States openly in 1929-33—in that period, some international bankers, led from London, but including prominent bankers such as Brown Brothers Harriman in the United States, Morgan, and so forth—the Morgan-du Pont-Mellon crowd. They did two things: First of all, at the end of 1932, they organized a fund to bail out Adolf Hitler. The Nazi Party was bankrupt at that point, at the end of '32. And so, the decision was made from London, to bail out Hitler. The bail-out came from New York City; it came from the firm of Harriman. The check, or the order to bail out the Hitler campaign, was signed by Prescott Bush, the grandfather of the present President of the United States.

Now, at a later point, the British and American pro-Hitlerites changed their mind. They were perfectly content to have Hitler be a nuisance, for destroying continental Europe. But they were not willing to accept his becoming a threat to the English-speaking world.

And therefore, as you know, we prepared for war, when Winston Churchill, as Defense Secretary appealed to President Roosevelt, we accelerated our efforts to prepare for war. We prevented Britain from joining France in going into the Nazi camp. If Britain had gone into the Nazi camp at that time, then you would have had an immediate unity of fascist forces on the continent of Europe, which would immediately attack the Soviet Union, and expect to destroy the Soviet Union in a short time. Once they had destroyed the Soviet Union, they planned to take the combined naval forces of Japan, Britain, Germany, and France, and attack the United States, in an attack which was planned to include an attack on Pearl Harbor by the Japanese Navy.

This did not happen. The agreement between Roosevelt and Churchill prevented the British from surrendering to Hitler, and started the process which doomed Hitler's prospect for establishing world empire, including the destruction of the United States. Under those conditions, the English-speaking part of the British Commonwealth (as it's called today), and the United States, joined fully in supporting the war effort against Hitler. This included Brown Brothers Harriman—reluctantly; it included Morgan; it included Mellon; it included the British banks. It included Lord Halifax—a pro-Hitler man, who served as British ambassador to Washington, during the war years. It included Lord Beaverbrook, who was also a pro-Hitler man, who functioned as British propaganda minister, in effect, during the wartime years. And Beaverbrook, whose progeny today include Conrad Black and the Fox TV crowd—Rupert Murdoch—as his scions.

So, what you have is, you have this continuity of a process which led into this war.

Now, I said, in January of 2001, the danger is this: They put Hitler into power, through these bankers—U.S. and British bankers—put Hitler into power as the Chancellor of Germany, on the 30th of January, 1933. In the third week of February, Hermann Göring, who was head of the Nazi Party in Brandenburg, organized the burning of the Reichstag, the national parliament of Germany. And the burning of the national parliament was used for a law devised by the guy who taught Leo Strauss of Chicago University: Carl Schmitt. Hitler was made dictator, and at that point World War II was inevitable.

And we fought it.

The danger is, that under these kinds of conditions—as I said in January [2001]—we have to aware of the danger of a Reichstag Fire, or something like it in the United States. That Reichstag Fire occurred on Sept. 11, 2001. Since that time, the United States has been sliding toward dictatorship and war. Now, we're the United States; we are not Germany of 1933. And therefore, the ability of the chief proponent of the Reichstag Fire approach, Vice President Dick Cheney, has not been able to become full dictator; he does not have full, total control over the puppet-President George W. Bush, Jr. But he has close to it. And therefore, since 2002, I've been engaged actively in trying to have Dick Cheney removed from office.

Synarchists Against the American Republic

Because Dick Cheney and the neo-conservatives associated with him, are not only an imitation of the Adolf Hitler movement, they are a continuation of it! As I've identified it, it's a movement, that was called in the 20th Century, the Synarchists. The Synarchist organization was created, actually, under another name, called the Martinists, in France, back in the 1780s. It was created by the British leadership at that time, Lord Shelburne, who was the political boss of the British East India Company, and the paymaster of the British Parliament, and of George III, himself.

He planned this operation, beginning 1763, to frustrate what he saw as a forthcoming struggle for independence in the North American English-speaking colonies. The other thing was to destroy France, which was the chief rival of British power in Europe. The purpose of Lord Shelburne's operation, was to ensure that the emerging British Empire—that is, the British maritime power, representing financier-oligarchical private interests—would not only control the British Isles, India, and other things they'd stolen by that time, but that it would dominate Europe, and dominate the world, like ancient Venice, like a kind of Roman Empire, or a new form of Roman Empire.

And therefore, what he did is, he planned two things, especially once the American Revolution had occurred: To prevent the continued influence of the American Revolution in continental Europe—to wipe it out; to destroy the influence of the American Revolution and the Constitutional republic.

Secondly, to destroy France—a continuation of the operation. It was he, through his agents, who created the French Revolution. The French Revolution was an operation of the British East India Company, under Lord Shelburne. They not only created the Bastille event, through agents of Shelburne—one was called Philippe Égalité, and the other was Jacques Necker. It was done as a stunt to get Necker as the Prime Minister of France, which worked at that time. Then, they disappeared from the stage. They were followed by Danton and Marat, who were British agents, trained under Shelburne's influence, in London; dispatched to France; and acted, and even all of their speeches were written in London, under Jeremy Bentham's direction. All their orders, were British orders. Then, they succeeded these fellows, by the Jacobin Terror, which was eliminated in 1794. Then, they moved, in the middle of the decade, toward Napoleon Bonaparte.

All of these things were done by a group called the Martinists, a cult which was created around this. And Napoleon Bonaparte was a reflection of that.

Since that time, to the present, you had the continuation of this kind of operation, trying to destroy the United States—the War of 1812 involvement against us, was an attempt to destroy the United States. Other things were done: The war with Mexico was an attempt to destroy the United States. The Civil War was organized by these people, to destroy the United States. The occupation of Mexico, in 1863, was done from there, as part of an effort to destroy the United States. And, the thing was, it was not just our country they wanted to destroy: They wanted to destroy the tradition of the American Revolution, of the American republic, because we represented the alternative model to this Anglo-Dutch Liberal parliamentary form of government, which the British ruled.

But, in this period, the British game was, generally, to cause trouble on the continent of Europe, in such a way, that never on the continent of Europe would a combination of power arise, which would be able to challenge British power. After 1865, when the United States had won the Civil War, against Britain—and France, and Napoleon III, and so forth—at that point, the British recognized that the United States could never be conquered from outside. Therefore, they gave up on these attempts to overthrow our government by military force, or from the outside.

Instead, they went to another road: corruption. They got us under the control of the London gold exchange standard system. That was step number one. The King of England, Edward VII, at the beginning of the century, used one of his agents in New York City, Jacob Schiff, who designed the Federal Reserve System of the United States, as a way of subverting our Constitution, and bringing us under control of international bankers. Which has more or less succeeded, off and on. Roosevelt fought against this, but was not entirely successful.

So, we have been corrupted, and that comes to the economic question, as I shall show.

So, the problem is, we face an enemy within and without, which are called, in the United States today, "neo-conservatives," or similar types. They're determined to bring about a world order, of a certain type. They have certain military objectives in mind, to do this; these are already operational. If this succeeds, if Cheney remains in office—if Cheney remains in office through the coming election, next year, you must not expect the United States to survive: It will not.

So therefore, we are dealing with something in the continuation of the Hitler phenomenon, the so-called Synarchist phenomenon, whose origin goes back to the 18th Century. This has undergone changes over the period, but this phenomenon is continuing. Don't look for conspiracies of any importance from other sources; they are all of this type. It is not a group of this; it is not a group of that; it's a group of private, financier interests, who, when a crisis comes, say, "We are going to collect on our debts—even if it means killing the people." That when government has to make a choice between collecting debts for bankers and protecting the people, this group has one determination: They're going to maintain the system under which they create debts, by which they enslave the population. And they're going to make sure that the debts are collected, for their benefit—promptly—even if it means killing the people.

And that's the fundamental issue that defines these kinds of things. That is why, every time, in the 20th Century and since, that you have a major, systemic financial crisis, or monetary crisis, the danger of something like Nazism comes up again! Because some group of bankers, hiring thugs—like this thug Cheney, who's nothing but a thrown-away jock from a football field; but, he's a killer. He's been involved in secret intelligence operations, at a high level, since he served under Nixon, and since he served as Chief of Staff for Gerald Ford. He is a killer. He is not smart, but he represents killers. And, he is the kind of guy that will order you killed. And he has the people working with him, who will do the job. That's why so many politicians are afraid of him, and afraid to mention his name in public, today: because he's a killer. He's very bad tempered, among his other amiable qualities.

'The Open Conspiracy'

Now, let's go through these three issues, with that said. The beginning of the present form of military crisis, starts in about 1928, with the publication of a book by H.G. Wells, called The Open Conspiracy. This book was immediately adopted as a policy by Bertrand Russell, probably the most evil man living, during the 20th Century. These fellows developed—it started with Wells, who was the first one to get the idea of using nuclear weapons, as creating a weapon so terrible, that people would give up sovereignty of their national governments, for world government. This is a general outline of the objective of the group, in this Open Conspiracy book, published in 1928, by H.G. Wells.

Russell himself was instrumental in the development of nuclear weapons. It was Russell, for example, who wrote the letter, which was signed by Einstein, but never delivered to Roosevelt, even though it was addressed to him; but, it was this operation, which started the development of nuclear weapons. People had ideas of the capability of nuclear weapons before then, but nobody had actually started, until Russell wrote the letter. Russell directed all the key people involved in developing the nuclear weapons—that is, the controlling people. And Princeton Institute became a nest of the control for this.

So, then, the war proceeded—World War II. It started with the idea of strategic bombing of civilian populations. That did not go on from the U.S. side, immediately; the British started it. A British scientist by the name of Lindemann was the key author of the policy. This was called the strategic bombing policy, of bombing harmless cities. Then, they added to that, of course, the idea of using nuclear weapons, rather than fire-bombing of civilian populations, as a way of dealing with this.

Then, President Roosevelt died. At that point, the Mellons, the Morgans, the du Ponts, decided to get rid of the Roosevelt legacy. Roosevelt was in bad condition, because of his illness. He'd worked himself almost to death. He was expected to die soon. They did not want Henry Wallace to be the living Vice President, when Roosevelt died. So, in the Democratic Party Convention of the Summer of 1944, Wallace was replaced by a stupid thug: a right-wing, racist thug, Harry Truman. And Harry Truman's onset into power, even as Vice President, signalled the unleashing of terror bombing—unnecessary terror bombing against civilian populations, such as the bombing of Tokyo; the planned bombing of Hamburg; the bombing of Dresden; the bombing of Magdeburg. And so forth, and so on, in Germany—other cities.

The American policy was precision bombing. Bomb meaningful [military] targets. But, the British policy was mass bombing of civilian populations, a thing which prolonged the war, because the Germans, who were about to surrender, were not willing to surrender because of this terror bombing. They were not disposed to surrender, at that point.

Then came the time Japan was ready to surrender: By the Spring of 1945, the Emperor of Japan had negotiated—through the Office of Extraordinary Affairs of the Vatican, through then Monsignor Montini (later the Pope Paul VI)—had negotiated the terms of peace which he wanted. The only condition attached to this, was that the dignity of the Emperor would be maintained: That is, that the institutions of government would concede to almost anything, but they had to maintain the unity of the nation of Japan, which could only be done by keeping the Emperor in place. That was the only condition. Once that condition had been accepted, Japan would have surrendered.

But, the United States refused to make that condition—though after the surrender, they honored all those conditions! Japan was rebuilt. The Emperor was kept in place. Just exactly as it had been promised through the Vatican channel. Then, why did we drop nuclear weapons—the only two we had—on the civilian populations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki?

[Question from the audience, arguing that Germany already had the atomic bomb.]

No, no, no, not true. Not true. That's a myth, it's not true.... Listen, be patient. That's wrong. But, your information is false. Okay? I'm an expert, your information is false. I know the area. I know the facts.

Okay, so we bombed it. So, what did this do?

The objective here—remember, we had defeated Japan. Japan is an island-nation, with a very small part of its territory that's habitable. A mountain island-nation. MacArthur's policy had been to totally blockade it, by air and by sea. This meant naval blockades. It meant submarine warfare blockades, and aerial blockades. Japan reached the point it could no longer get materials it required for the existence of the economy of the islands of Japan, from the continent of Asia. It could not survive; its only opportunity was to surrender. It had no military significance: It was a defeated nation, in fact. The question was, how to get the surrender through.

Well, some people didn't want the surrender; they had another idea. And, the idea was dropping those two bombs—which they had intended to drop on Berlin. But, the war in Europe was finished too soon. They couldn't get the bombs ready in time to drop them on Berlin, which was their original intention. So they said, "We'll do something else. We'll drop them on Japan." And they picked two civilian target cities of no military significance, or very much significance: Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

This was done as part of a policy, devised by Bertrand Russell. It was called "preventive nuclear warfare." The policy, as Russell explained it, in September of 1946, in his magazine, published in Washington: The purpose of this was to use a weapon so terrible—nuclear weapons—that nations would submit to world government, give up their sovereignty, rather than face the terror of nuclear weapons. That was the purpose of this operation.

Now, from that point on, from 1945 until the beginning of the 1950s, the United States' policy, was to bring the Soviet Union to surrender, by building up an arsenal of nuclear weapons, and planes to deliver these bombs, upon the Soviet Union. That a pre-emptive nuclear attack on the Soviet Union, could cause the submission of the Soviet Union, to U.S. domination and world government. And, that would be the end of it, for the rest of the world.

Now, what happened was, that Truman was an idiot, among other things, his other excellent qualifications. And, he tried to bluff both the Soviet Union and China, with operations aimed at various points in Asia. He operated on the assumption, as the records of the time show, that the Soviet Union and China would do nothing about it. They didn't have nuclear weapons, and therefore, they would have to accept it, and they would not react.

They continued the operation. And then, as a result of that, North Korea, under Soviet direction, with Chinese Communist sympathy, invaded South Korea. The United States was stuck, with a few American troops—a Korean army which had been destroyed and a few American troops—in a small perimeter around the southern tip of Korea, around Pusan. This changed, of course, when MacArthur did the obvious, when he assumed command: He outflanked the situation, outflanked the North Korean army, by an assault with the Inchon landing. That changed the situation. But then, it went on. We decided that maybe that wasn't such a good idea, that war.

Then, it was known that the Soviet Union had developed the first thermonuclear weapon, the first deployable thermonuclear weapon. Now, how can you have nuclear fission-weapon warfare against a nation which has thermonuclear weapons?

So, this resulted in the dumping of Truman. They told him, "You're not going to run for re-election." And he didn't. It also brought Eisenhower into the Presidency, because Eisenhower was opposed to this, and represented those military officers, and others, who were opposed to this so-called kind of preventive nuclear warfare. So, we had eight years of relative stability, under Eisenhower. And the Democratic Party was not allowed to have the Presidency, at that time, because the Democratic Party had been contaminated by the Truman preventive-nuclear-warfare doctrine.

Then, Eisenhower retired. And people who represented the Russell conception of preventive nuclear warfare, the so-called "utopians," typified by Allen Dulles, and his brother John Foster Dulles, began to act. Kennedy had been elected; Kennedy was a very intelligent man—very capable—and showed his promise as he went along, in the few years he survived after that point. But, at the start, he did not know, really, what the game was! And, he was not a man respected in the military, in the way that Eisenhower was. Therefore, he could not have the influence on the professional military, that Eisenhower could, in dealing with these utopian warriors—the Air Force crowd, who want to bomb everything: Develop missiles and bomb everything, with nuclear weapons.

So then, we had the 1962 Missile Crisis. We had events, including the assassination of President Kennedy himself; we had then, the launching of the first official war in Indo-China—that is, U.S. official war in Indo-China. Now, again, the same mistake was made—by the United States, by these warriors—that had been made by Truman, on the question that led to the Korean War! They assumed, at that point, in going into Vietnam, they assumed that the Chinese would not actually intervene against an American attack on North Vietnam. Therefore, they went ahead, assuming they had an "easy job"! And it wasn't an easy job, because the Soviet Union, knowing that it was under attack, too—even though the Chinese did not support North Vietnam, or Vietnam in general; as a matter of fact, they didn't like the Vietnamese. The Russians intervened, and assisted to devise a strategy, under which Indo-China could defend itself, against U.S. occupation.

Asymmetric Warfare

Now, this is what's called "asymmetric warfare." And it's asymmetric warfare, in the age of nuclear weapons.

The classic case of asymmetric warfare of this type, occurred in 1812-1813: Napoleon Bonaparte, with his Grande Armée, was about to invade Russia, occupy it, and thus subject all of continental Europe to Napoleon's own, personal domination. At this point, a section of the Prussians, headed by Scharnhorst, decided to assist the Russians in defending themselves against Napoleon's planned invasion. Incidentally Lazare Carnot, who was the greatest French military man of that period, told Napoleon, "Don't be stupid. Don't try it." He had a general understanding of what the problem was.

The Prussian military, which advised the Tsar and helped him, proposed a policy, which was developed in the works of Friedrich Schiller. The point was: Do not try to engage the enemy at the border. He's got superior forces; he's got a half-million-man army, dragged up from all over Europe. If you try to have a decisive battle against him at the Russian border, you will be destroyed, and he will overrun Russia. So, what they said is, "Don't. Do a rearguard, withdrawal action. Trap him into Russia. And prepare to destroy two cities—Petersburg and Moscow—if Napoleon goes to either." So, Napoleon was put through a rearguard defense, by the Russians, which kept him coming on, and he decided to advance toward Moscow. He occupied Moscow; he was declaring and celebrating victory. Then the city blew up! It had been mined.

At that point, the Russian people, and the military forces which had been conserved, fell upon Napoleon, such that when Napoleon was sitting, later, in Poland, waiting for the last of his army to come across from Russia, one man came across the border: Marshal Ney. And Napoleon said to Marshal Ney, "Where's your troops?" He said, "Emperor, I am your troops." All the rest of them were captured, or dead.

That was the end of the Grande Armée.

Now, in modern warfare, in a major nuclear war, when you engage countries at a distance and you can throw large weapons and weaponry against them, that's one kind of warfare. But there's another kind of warfare: Let the enemy invade; let him try to occupy the country. And, when he tries to occupy the country, our people are going to be next to him: At short-range, thermonuclear weapons don't work. And, that's what the Vietnamese did, against the American invasion in Indo-China.

That is what, in effect, is happening now; that's what's happening in Iraq.

The Iraqi people are a nationalist people. All this double-talk about Saddam Hussein being the big problem; this and that, and so forth; al-Qaeda, so forth—it's all junk! The Iraqi people have gone through occupation before. They were occupied—as Iraq as a nation—under the Ottoman Empire; they were occupied by the British, during the end of the Ottoman Empire. They were occupied by the British after the First World War. They were occupied more recently. And the occupation of Iraq has strengthened the sense of nationalism.

Do not try to assume, that differences in religion define the way you can split up Iraq: It's not that simple. Iraqis include everything: You have Christians, of various varieties—Armenians, others, and so forth: Christians. You used to have some Jews—they got kicked out, in a way. You used to have all kinds of Arab religions, Muslim religions; they had Druze—everything there. But, they all lived together. They had a certain degree of amity among them. They all thought of themselves as Iraqis; they spoke with quite similar accents, and quite similar thoughts. And, they were concerned with Iraq, as a nation. Any fights they had, among these groups, were fights within the nation! They did not define a separate nation; they defined a fight within the nation. We have these things within the United States—as you may know, as well.

So, the Iraqi people are now reacting to the punishing, cruel, unjust war dumped upon them. They don't care who did it, in a sense. They are going to defend their nation.

Now, they are also, in a sense, an Asian culture. In Asia, the ideas of life and death are somewhat different than they are in European civilization, and they are prepared to die for the future of their culture, for the future of their nation. That's where you get this suicide-bombing process, from that kind of culture.

So, now you have the American Army, vastly outnumbered by the population of the country it occupies, in a country which has over 2 million trained military fighters, who are trained as part of the Iraqi military capability. We have a couple hundred thousand-odd American troops—who are totally incompetent, most of the troops, for the job. These are point-and-shoot people, who can go out in the streets and shoot off a weapon, rapidly, at even a suspected target, like the Columbine killers. They're trained on video point-and-shoot methods. They don't know how to think; they haven't been trained; they're not qualified. They're not an engineering troop—they're not qualified for anything, for occupation work. And, they're sitting there, hopelessly. What are they? Are they occupiers, or targets? Increasingly, they shift from being an occupying force, to a targetted bunch of people—frightened, targetted, so forth—has occurred.

Cheney's 'Preventive War' Drive

So, what we're dealing with now: When Cheney brought this policy back in, after Sept. 11, 2001, and had it sold officially to the U.S. government, as reflected in the State of the Union speech in January 2002, we've now entered a new phase in a certain kind of conception of strategic conflict. You have on the one side, what we used to call "conventional warfare"—pre-nuclear methods of warfare. You had, at the other extreme, what used to be called "Mutual and Assured Destruction"—the idea, if you go to thermonuclear warfare, full-scale, you probably will destroy most of the population of the planet, and most culture; so therefore, you can't go there. You can't conduct conventional warfare any more. It doesn't work, because you'll go to a threshold, at which some other kind of warfare, including the use of nuclear weapons, will break out.

So, the effort has been, to find a way to conduct wars, between the level of conventional warfare and general thermonuclear warfare. That's what Cheney is talking about: preventive nuclear warfare, in that dimension.

We do not, in the United States, have the ability to deal with the kind of reaction, that we are provoking, with our present forces and our present policy. The United States can not win the kind of war that Cheney is trying to launch. We'll lose it. Why? Because the reaction, especially in Asia, will be strategic defense, which they will call "asymmetric warfare." You're dealing with civilian populations, which are prepared to resist, in every way. Some of these people represent superior weapons capabilities: Russian weapons, technologically, are very interesting. Some Chinese weapons are interesting. Indian weapons are interesting.

But, the basic principle is population warfare: If the people of an occupied or threatened territory decide to engulf an occupying military force, at close quarters, the United States is not capable of winning such a war.

Therefore, you're stuck in a period, you either go to thermonuclear war, in which case the planet is generally destroyed; or, you don't, and you go into a process of attrition, through popular wars, in which most of the world falls into a Dark Age.

So therefore, on this kind of policy, by Cheney and Company, the military policies of Cheney and the Bush Administration, and the military policies supported by many Democrats—including Democrats who won't fight it—are bringing the whole planet toward an early Dark Age. If Cheney continues in his position, with his policies—where the people around him are called neo-conservatives, with their policies—if this goes on, if there's an attack on Syria; if there's an attack on Iran; if there's an attack on North Korea; you will see the world is committed—with Cheney still having control over a puppet-President—the world is committed to a Dark Age for all humanity. Even on military grounds, alone.

And that's what we're up against.

We're in a situation, in which I know there are ways to bring about a general peace on this planet. It's available. It's available to the United States, with the right President. I can do the job. I know how to do it.

Cultural Roots of the Economic Crisis

All right: Let's go to the second question, the economic question. As some of you recall, we came out of the Depression and war, and the post-war period, under Roosevelt's initiative, and even with the bungling we did after the war, we emerged as the most powerful, productive nation on this planet. And the most powerful nation on this planet. This continued up until after the Kennedy assassination.

What happened?

The shock of living under a threat of thermonuclear warfare, general nuclear warfare, which had gone on in one degree or another, since 1945, up until 1962-63, had produced a tension in the population. In the U.S. population, this tension had been increased by a right-wing turn under Truman. (It was not Joe McCarthy who gave us McCarthyism—it was Harry Truman. And it started in 1945-46. It didn't start in 1947-48.) So, the typical American, who had returned from war, was terrified. He was terrified of going into a new depression. He was terrified of a new war. And they adopted the policy, "Keep your mouth shut. Say what's expected of you. Be careful what our children say. Be careful who you talk to." We lived under right-wing terror in this United States, and we came to call it McCarthyism. To a certain degree, Eisenhower liberated the nation from McCarthyism. To a certain degree.

But, the people who had been subjected to this immoral thing, this capitulation to terror, to Nazi-like terror—it wasn't like Hitler, yet, but in that direction—they lost their souls; they sold their souls. They wanted to get a job. They wanted to be secure. They didn't want to lose their job, because of security clearance problems. They went into suburbia, if they could. They told their children, "Be careful what you say; be careful what you say. What you believe is not important—it's what you're overheard saying, that's important. Saying the right thing, that's important. There is no truth—it's saying the right thing, that doesn't get you into trouble. Maybe get you a promotion. That's the right thing."

So, the parents, the veterans' generation, told their children, especially in suburbia: "Be careful." So, the children, born as what became known as the Baby-Boomers, were permeated with a great deal of immorality worse than in their parents' generation! Because they had been conditioned, that there is no truth. They had been conditioned in Dr. Spock; they had been conditioned in "touchy-feely."

When we were hit by the Missile Crisis—and some of you here were old enough to experience that—when we were hit with the Missile Crisis, for several days, people in this country were wandering around in barrooms looking for the church. Expecting the thing was going to strike, and we were going to be obliterated any morning, or any evening. Pure terror! This affected strongly, most effectively, the younger people, who were then in late adolescence, going on toward young adulthood. The result was a phenomenon, called, from 1964 on—from the time that the Beatles appeared on the Ed Sullivan stage, on CBS—this was called the cultural paradigm-shift. "Don't accept reality. Go into un-reality. We are leaving producer society! We don't want blue shirts any more. We want white shirts—or maybe multi-colored shirts. Or, maybe no shirts at all! Or, maybe no clothes at all!" Maybe, "We want pleasure! Wherever you can get it (from whomever you can take it)!" The Woodstock phenomenon, right?

So, we said, "Technology is bad! Production is bad! You've got to have the simple life. Get away from technology. Science is dangerous!" So, we began to shift, from a producer society, to a consumer society, and a pleasure society.

Then, Nixon, in 1971, sank the dollar, sank the international monetary system. The Azores Conference which followed, put us into a floating-exchange-rate system. And then we really got nasty: With our control over a floating-exchange-rate monetary system, under American and British control, we went to various nations, using the London market, we would run a currency down in value—say Mexico's currency, other currencies. We would then send a team into the country, having collapsed the value of that currency on the world market by speculation, the way Soros did to Malaysia, in 1997. Now, we would have the IMF and World Bank come in, and "give you some advice, on how to solve this problem. And whatever they recommend, we'll support."

So, the IMF and World Bank would come in—both are the same, one or the other—and they would say, "Drop the value of your currency. Devalue your currency."

They'd say, "Okay. We might accept that. But, that means we pay our debts in our currency, right?"

"Oh, no, no, no! You don't pay your foreign debts in your currency! You pay your foreign debts in dollars!"

And, now, your currency just got devalued. So now, you have to accept a larger debt, based on the difference between the old value and the new value. Such that, for example, in Central and South America, if you look at what these countries owed, as of 1971-72, they have more than paid every foreign debt obligation they ever incurred. But they have a bigger debt, than ever before. A gigantic swindle.

So, on the basis of this, we go into a country—we say, to China and other countries, "Drop the value of your currency!" What does that mean? That means, you're going to collapse the internal economy of that country. You're going to collapse the infrastructure, you're going to collapse the general infrastructure. "But, you're going to work for us! You are going to be our market. You are going to be our market, for our industries! We are going to ship our factories, and our farms, from the United States, into your countries—and you're going to work for us, almost for free. And, we are going to get all this stuff from you—cheap!"

So, we say, "We can no longer 'compete' with China. We can no longer 'complete' with South America. They can produce too cheaply."

Why do they produce so cheaply? Because we stuck a gun to their head, and forced them to work cheaply, and give up their industries.

What happened to the jobs here? What happened to our industries? They're gone! Mostly gone. And what remains, is going fast.

So, we went, over this period of the past 40 years, we underwent a cultural paradigm-shift, a change in the character of our nation, from being the world's leading producer society, which was the characteristic of us, traditionally—the characteristic of our economy, from the time that Roosevelt assumed office, to the end of the war; which continued to be our characteristic of social values, into the time of the Kennedy Administration.

Then, we went through a change from a producer society to a consumer society, a pleasure society. We became like ancient Rome after the Second Punic War, where Rome was so powerful, and instituted slavery at home—and we've got conditions like slavery here, at home today. What about our homeless, and people like that? People who actually earn a living, but are homeless! They can't afford a home, at today's rent prices. So, Rome degenerated, because it ceased to produce for itself, and controlled its population through what were called "bread and circuses." What do we have in the United States? Very little bread, and a lot of circuses—television circuses; mass-entertainment circuses; sexual-fad circuses; anti-sexual fad pleasure-seeking; all kinds of things.

So, we have been destroyed as a nation: We no longer have the productive ability we had. We have vast nominal wealth, but it's basically what we can extract from other countries, which are now going bankrupt. Germany, right now, for example, the leading economy in Western Europe, is disintegrating—at a rapid rate. (I could go into details, but I won't here.) But, that's the situation.

So therefore, we've come to a point, where we have this vast accumulation of debt. We have vast inflation in financial values. Financial aggregates are up, per capita. Monetary circulation—up, fast! We're printing money like crazy. We're printing it, not by the printing press: We're printing it, even electronically. Overnight! Vast amounts.

The physical output of the United States, per capita and per square kilometer, has dropped. That is, if you look at what the physical values are, of consumption: Look, for example, at the case of power generation and distribution. The power generation and distribution is collapsing! These industries are being collapsed! To maintain the standard of living and production we used to have, say in New England—you can't do it any more. The industry is collapsing. We now have a deficit in the United States, in terms of capital investment, in power generation, which goes into trillions of dollars. That is, to put things back, to the point that we can, today, assure communities and assure households and industries the access to power they once expected, we would have to invest trillions of dollars of capital investment, to rebuild the industry, and other things.

Our transportation system is collapsed. We would have to put in vast amounts of investment, to rebuild the transportation industry. Water management, pollution, things of that sort.

So, we have a ruined country. We no longer have the productive ability that we once had. We can no longer support ourselves by our own effort. We've become dependent, like the Romans, on stealing from their foreign victims. That's where we are.

So, eventually, that has to come to an end.

The Tyranny of Popular Opinion

Now, what this produces, is the following: We've come to a point, where over the past 40 years—don't blame the government, alone. Blame the people: Because, who voted for some of these idiots? Who voted for persons who propose these kinds of policies? Who adopted the idea of post-industrial society? Who promoted it? Who promoted antipathy to technology? Who called for deregulation? Who supported deregulation? Who voted for guys who pushed it? Who voted and tolerated—or, didn't vote for anything at all? Just gave up? For all the bad things, that have happened to us, to destroy this economy, to lead it to the brink of a collapse: Who did it?

The American people!

How did it express itself? It expressed itself, as so-called "popular opinion"! How did it reflect itself? It reflected itself in voting patterns, and in non-voting patterns!

Over the past period, since 1977, the physical standard of living of the lower 80% of family-income brackets has collapsed at an accelerating rate. The homelessness, the vast homelessness, is only a part of it. The collapse of health care. The collapse of education. The collapse of essential services. The collapse in transportation systems. You can't afford to live in this society any more!

But who did it? Popular opinion!

Now, this is not unusual in history. See, mankind is generally ruled, or self-ruled, by popular opinion. People behave, generally, as was described by some sociologists, as "other-directed": They borrow their opinions from their neighbors, like cups of sugar. They say, "Well, what do you believe?" "Well, wha—, uh, whatever you say!" "Whatever the news media says. I gotta go along with the news media. I gotta go along with the party." Huh? Other-directed.

Now, we have destroyed ourselves, not because some people have introduced bad policies, but because we tolerated them. Worse, we became supporters of bad policies, in the name of supporting public opinion. "I gotta go by what the newspapers report. I've got to go by what the neighbors tell me." And that's how we do it. That's called "public opinion." We're destroyed.

All right, so, what does this mean? This means, that in history, there are cycles, which occur over a period of generations—one generation, two, three generations. Cycles in which wrong opinions will build up, take more and more control, more intensely over a population and its behavior, and its leading institutions. The society then appears, like ancient Rome, to be in the process of destroying itself, as we are today. Then, what happens? Do we survive? Well, in 1933, we survived. In the 1932 election, we elected Franklin Roosevelt, who told the world pretty much what direction his policies were going to take. And, we had enough gumption left in us, after the shock of the Depression, to support him; at least, the majority of us did. He made a change, in our culture. He made a shift from the culture of the 1920s—the Flapper era—to the culture of the 1930s and the 1940s.

So, we abandoned a bad kind of public opinion, came back to our senses, to a large degree; decided we had to have a healthy producer society—and it worked! It worked just fine, with all the flaws in it. We emerged, again, as the leading producer society, and the greatest power in the world, the greatest planetary power.

Now, we've come again to the point: We, out of stupidity, have destroyed ourselves; this has gone on for about 40 years, in particular. There were other things, earlier, but 40 years of this culture, the prevailing culture. That means that you are presented today, with politicians, in general, who, reading public opinion, will always have the wrong response. This means that the lawmaking process will usually give you the wrong law. The election will usually give you the wrong candidate elected. And that's more and more the case. Why? Because, public opinion.

But, what is this public opinion? It is the public opinion, which has developed and accumulated like an avalanche over the past years. And now, if the nation's going to survive, it has to change its public opinion. You have to introduce values, which are contrary to what is generally accepted. If you don't, the nation is not going to survive. If you don't, the same thing could happen here, as happened in Germany in 1933. That's the process.

The Housing Crisis

This produces an interesting problem. The so-called Baby-Boomer generation, which has accepted this change, are now in their fifties. They are looking forward to comfort. Most of these comforts are illusions. I mean, you take a guy, say in Northern Virginia. A lot of areas of the country have been despoiled; it's not possible to live in these parts of the country. I was just looking at some of the parts of New Hampshire and Vermont, that I passed through in the past days. I mean, to call some of these things that people are living in "hovels," is like calling them "palaces." You have people who are living in conditions of life which are unbelievable, in the United States! You can see that, in those who occupy hovels off the road, in the backwoods of Vermont and New Hampshire, and elsewhere. That's the typical situation, throughout the country, one way or the other.

But then, there's a worse level: the homelessness. We're getting people—a quarter of the population is moving toward the direction of homelessness, or already there, now. Extreme poverty.

But, you have a population of the Baby-Boomers, the ones who are in the upper 20% of income brackets, or in that ideology, saying, "Oh, no, no! No, no. That could never happen! That could never happen." What is typical of this thing? You see somebody go out of these poor areas, where there are no longer any jobs, and they move into an area where jobs are available. This means, that in certain parts of the United States, we have housing booms.

Now, what is the housing? Look at it closely—some of you, who know something about construction. You put up something, which qualifies as a potential tarpaper shack, probably a little larger than a usual tarpaper shack. How do you hold the thing together? You wrap it, with shrink-wrap; it's called "insulation." How do you make this piece of shrink-wrap garbage look like a house? Well, you take some plastic exterior, about a one-sixteenth-of-an-inch-thick slab; paint it; paste it on plastic. Make it look like brick. Make it look like something else. When you get through with this process (maybe putting a couple of gold-plated faucets in the "luxury" version of this house, huh?), it goes up for a mortgage value of, say, $400,000 to $600,000.

And, some poor guy, who has moved in from a poor area of the United States, to get a job in these areas, probably in the IT industry, or something like that; and two members of the family, at least, are working—the house is very seldom occupied: They're all usually working on two or three jobs most of the time, when they're not just plain commuting, on these parking lots, called our superhighways, huh? And this is what's going on! In this country.

Now, the values of these houses, recently, became ridiculous, because people are not really getting by. Despite their high salaries, so-called, from IT and so forth; and despite two members of the family working all kinds of hours, and commuting all kinds of hours, they really can't make ends meet. So, along come some real estate dealers, and along comes this man who should never be allowed out of his bathtub—that is, Alan Greenspan (he'd never come clean, otherwise)—come along, and they start pumping money into the Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac mortgage operation.

Then, you have real estate dealers, who are in on the racket. These real estate dealers then say, "No, the values of housing in this area have really gone up." Suddenly, the bankers call up the mortgagees, the people with mortgages, and say, "Hey! Your house has just increased in value. Why don't you re-mortgage it? You can get some cash." So, people in various parts of the country, have been buying their groceries, from these areas, by "cashing out," based on an appreciation in the nominal value of the mortgages! Nothing actually happened. Someone said, in the real estate community, "These properties, here, are now increased in value in this area." So, the banker in the area, who is in on it, calls up the people bearing the mortgages, and tells them, "Well! You can get some money. If you just refinance your mortgage, you'll get an increase of several thousand dollars," or whatever, "and you can put that in your pocket!" And they use that to guy groceries, and things like that.

Now, what happens when it goes the other way? You're turning homeowners into squatters, if they're lucky. What happens if you have a vast collapse of employment in these areas, which has been oncoming, since about March, or so, or April of the year 2002, in the IT industry?

So, we're in the process of a general collapse of the financial system, in which, suddenly everything hits, more or less at once.

We can survive. I know how to make it survive. Anybody who understands Franklin Roosevelt, knows what approach to take. We can intervene in a collapsed economy; we can keep it functioning. We can make it grow again, as Roosevelt did. It'll be tough going, but we can do it.

All right. But, the Baby-Boomer says, "No." The Baby-Boomer says, "I have things I have come to believe in, values I've come to accept, lifestyles that are important to me. I'm not going to give them up. And, it's not going to change—you're going to see! It's not going to change! Look, things have been going this way for a long time now—it's not going to change! People aren't going to change. You're wrong! You're wrong! It's not going to change." You think they're slightly hysterical? I do.

All right. So do their children. See, children in the university-age eligibility—18 to 25—never really talk to their parents much any more. They consider it a waste of effort. They won't listen. Because, the young people of that age—and they have a lot of problems—but, the young people in that age, recognize that they have been given, by their parents and others, been given a society with no future to it.

All you have to do is talk to young people. Talk about the drug problem in society—not the way the Baby-Boomers talk about drug problems, but the way these young people talk about drug problems. It's not somebody passing out drugs in their neighborhood. That's not the problem! That is a problem, but it's not the problem: The problem is, the country is saturated, and affecting these young people, with a drug-culture. Who did it? Well, what about the schoolteachers, who pushed Ritalin, in schools? Told parents they would have a penalty, if their "attention-deficit" child, didn't get Ritalin, in a compulsory way. Or, how about some Prozac, which can turn you into a vegetable, in a couple of years? How about other drugs? How about all the people, who are taking psychotropics, of one kind or another, "to manage their emotions"?

"I don't like my wife."

"Take the drug, you'll feel good."

This is the kind of story!

But, so, the young people are afflicted, not only themselves, but among the people they have concern for, of their own generation: younger siblings, friends, so forth. The drug problem is a threat to their lives, in ways that the Baby-Boomer generation, say from the '60s—the Woodstock generation—would never understand!

But, they see in other ways: They see a no-education system, called education. They see a no-future society. Therefore, these young people are ready to make a change.

Emergence of the LaRouche Youth Movement

Now, as you know, I built up the organizing of a youth movement. It started in California, and it grew. I was very careful about it; I kept the youth movement largely away from my older associates—not people older than I am, but people who are younger than I am—because I knew they'd make a mess of it, because they would try to impose their values upon these young people. And, the point was, to find a context in which these young people would think for themselves, and work through problems for themselves, as if in a "university on wheels."

So, it worked. It started in California. We'd have these sessions, often by telephone, long cadre sessions, other arrangements. And we began to develop a movement. Then, a couple of years ago, in the sorting out process, we had a movement. It worked in California, and so I said, "Fine. We'll replicate it, and build it in the East Coast, too." And we started to do that.

Now, in the case of California, for example: As you know, there was a Recall election out there, organized by bunch of thugs. And it featured a certifiable thug, a monster called Arnie Schwarzenegger. He's a monster by profession. If you've seen his movies, you know that. We were determined to defend the state of California against the effects of this Recall election. Because Arnie was among the people who stole the money in California, and he was going to come in to fix things, after having stolen it. His friends were the big thieves, who raped the place.

But, the Democratic National Committee was of a different persuasion. They told Gov. Gray Davis not to really fight. He could have fought. He's the kind of candidate, the kind of politician who can win a fight like that. But, they told him, don't take my advice—and he backed off it, from that, though he was happy to have my support.

So we, with our youth movement especially, we concentrated on two areas—Los Angeles County and in the Bay Area. Now, in Los Angeles County, at the time we started the fight, the polls showed the vote going 60% for Schwarzenegger and Company, and 40% for Davis. By the time the election happened, we carried Los Angeles County—not just us, but our role in there was crucial—we carried Los Angeles County, 51% against 49%. We did better in the Bay Area. In every other part of California, generally, the whole thing was a disaster. And Schwarzenegger became elected Governor.

But, nonetheless, we had demonstrated, that where our youth movement was deployed, and engaged with other political forces, that the addition of the youth movement to the combination of the political fight, meant you had a winning combination, as opposed to what you had otherwise, which was a disaster.

On the basis of what we did in California, Mayor Street's organization in Philadelphia, coming under attack from John Ashcroft, invited us to help them. So, I said, "yes," immediately. We put the forces in there. And, as a result of this combination, again—of our people, working with their people, to make a combination: The combination of the youth movement in the context of the other forces, meant we had a relative landslide victory, in something that was a cliff-hanger, at that point.

What I'm illustrating by that is, today, the young people, of the type represented by my youth movement, are the most powerful political force, per capita, in the United States. Why? It has to do with what I just told you: An older generation, now in their fifties, generally, has gone through a long cycle of corruption. They've become accomplices in the destruction of themselves and their society. They see no future. They don't have any sense of immortality. Their sense is, that when they go, they go. And, "If Grandma is costing too much money, because of her health-care problems, she should quietly go away—because it might take our money away, if we had to support her, in her sickness." That's the society! That's the Baby-Boomer society! The culture! The characteristic of the upper 20% of the Baby-Boomer population! Its indifference to life: This lack of sense of immortality—of the sense that, "Yeah, we're all going to die. But, let's be decent about it. Let's die decently. Let's make our lives meaningful, by giving something to future generations, and by honoring the best contributions from past generations, and seeing to it that they go on, and live on, and benefit future generations to come."

The Baby-Boomer generation, especially those in this upper 20% bracket, do not have those values. They lost them somewhere, between the Missile Crisis and some other things, and what's happened up to date. They are dominating government. However—they are still human. They are still worth saving. We're trying to do the best we can in that direction.

The best way to save them, is to have them meet young people, who represent the generation of people who would be their children. These young people typify, for anyone, the future. We're all going to do die. So, what becomes of us? What becomes of our having lived, when we die? Can we hope that we have contributed something, which will live on, of benefit to future generations? Can we believe that?

Well, how can we believe it? Have we done something worth continuing? Number one.

Number two: Who is going to carry on? What do you do then? You're looking at these young people, with all their problems, their drug problems, all these afflictions—you look at them: This is your immortality! These young people are going to have children. Those grandchildren of yours: That's your immortality! It may not be your personal immortality, in one sense, but it's an expression of the fact, that you can commit your life, presently—even under great difficulties—to the sense that you're doing something, which will not be wasted, because there's someone coming after you, a couple of visible generations, which can carry on, and make the meaning of your life, something for the future of humanity; that you know something, that you can help transmit to these young people, something from the past, which is a treasure from the past, a cultural treasure. You pass it on—and they will see to it, that it's preserved for the future. And thus, you have a sense of immortality. You are openly in connection with the past of humanity; you're in connection with the future of humanity.

This gives you, not a sense of doing something, because you get a reward; because you get paid; because you get a benefit. This gives you a sense of a mission in life. We're all going to die. We're all born, we're all going to die, eventually. And therefore, what is important to us, in our life, considered from that standpoint? What is important, is adopting a mission, and using this life we have, as a talent, an asset, we spend. For what, do we spend a life, that we're using up? What future purpose is served by our living? What is so important, that we can die with smile on our face, saying, we've defeated death? Because we have contributed something, that will live on, after us! And that the whole of our life means something.

See, we've become a society, a corrupt society, a pleasure-seeking society, which is looking for rewards; looking for gratification. "Well, you know, that was years ago. This is years down the line. I gotta think about now—y'know what I mean, buddy? I gotta think now. My community, now! Huh? I gotta think about what I feel, now?" "Look, this woman just left me! That's my problem!" (Maybe she was right!)

This is the problem—we have gone from a society from looking at what we get, what we desire in the short term; and what pain we're trying to avoid in the short term—that's been the way we've gone, the way this culture's gone.

What you need is a sense of mission, which understands the essence of human life: We're not animals. We're not beasts. We can develop ideas, we can make discoveries. No beast can do that. So therefore, we have the sense of having a mission in life: That we are going to use our life, and spend it wisely, for some purpose which is presented to us, as an opportunity. We're going to recognize that opportunity; we're going to devote our life, to that opportunity, to fulfilling that opportunity. And we're going to have a sense of mission, about what we contribute to the future of humanity.

These young people, by representing that, particularly when they represent that in the way they approach life, become, in that way, an inspiration to the older generation, by giving back to the older generation, access to a sense of this kind of personal immortality in society. This may not deal with the religious sense of the matter, but it does complement it. And, it does define the meaning of citizenship.

Think of the three principles of the Preamble of the Constitution: the sovereignty of our nation, the sovereignty of our republic; the general welfare of all of our living; and the security of our posterity. When we, in our own lives, are meeting the requirements of that Preamble, and understand political society, as something which should be ordered accordingly, and read the intent of the Constitution that way, you understand why this republic, until now, is the only republic whose Constitution has survived over the period from 1789 to the present, in the world: No other nation, in the world, has a Constitution, which has lived as long as ours. The vitality of our system of government lies in the principle and purpose of that Constitution: that we are committed to the sovereignty of peoples; that each nation should be sovereign. We are committed to the general welfare, of all people—treating none like human cattle; all are human, and their welfare is a concern of all of us. We are also concerned, about what we leave to posterity, not just to our present gratification.

This is the underlying moral strength of the United States. My mission, among all the other things I must do, is to revive that sense of mission of the United States, in as many people as possible.

Thank you.